Miriam Goldstein of UCSD's Scripps Institution of Oceanography was the lead scientists on the trip to the Pacific Garbage Patch. (Howard Lipin / Union-Tribune)

This image provided by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography shows a patch of garbage in the Pacific Ocean on Aug. 11, 2009. Scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography on Thursday, Aug. 27, 2009 announced findings from an August expedition to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, about 1,000 miles west of California. The patch is a vortex formed by ocean currents and collects human-produced trash. (AP Photo/ Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Mario Aguilera) — AP

This image provided by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography shows a patch of garbage in the Pacific Ocean on Aug. 11, 2009. Scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography on Thursday, Aug. 27, 2009 announced findings from an August expedition to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, about 1,000 miles west of California. The patch is a vortex formed by ocean currents and collects human-produced trash. (AP Photo/ Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Mario Aguilera)
/ AP

Wanted: a seaworthy barge for picking up garbage from the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

That’s what officials from Project Kaisei looked for recently in San Diego. The Sausalito-based group is trying to become an international leader in removing loads from a massive swirl of trash — a gyre perhaps the size of Texas that is called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

The group is planning three monthlong collection voyages set to start in May, all part of a burgeoning effort to capture more debris from beaches, lagoons, harbors and the open ocean.

Some conservationists believe blue-water cleanups are the new frontier of marine stewardship, while some contend that resources are better spent on preventing plastics and other garbage from entering coastal waters in the first place. What they agree on are the broader goals, including reducing pollution and saving more animals from dying or becoming injured when they ingest bags, plastic soda rings and other items.

“Going up and trying to clean it out of the gyre, that is tokenism,” said Charles Moore, founder of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation in Long Beach. “It’s like trying to bail out the bathtub with the spigot on. We have got to stop the flow.”

Skepticism about offshore recovery efforts hasn’t stopped organizers at Project Kaisei — or “ocean planet” in Japanese — from taking on the logistic and financial challenge they call “capturing the plastic vortex.” The campaign was launched by the Ocean Voyages Institute, a nonprofit group founded in 1979 by sailors and preservationists who wanted to protect the world’s oceans.

Project Kaisei’s mission started to come into focus when it sponsored a trip last summer to study the garbage patch, which accumulates roughly 1,000 miles off San Diego in﻿ an area called the North Pacific Gyre. Trade winds can trap castoff products there for years, allowing them to slowly disintegrate into tiny bits that are swallowed by sea creatures.

“It was heartbreaking to sail away and leave all of that plastic pollution behind,” said Lenora Carey, who went on that Project Kaisei trip.

Around the same time, scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, part of the University of California San Diego, made a similar voyage on the New Horizon vessel. Together with Project Kaisei’s team, they spurred international interest in a problem that has been building for decades.

Miriam Goldstein, who was chief scientist for the Scripps expedition, avoids making conclusions about that journey because she has only completed one-third of her assessment of the debris collected.